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Cybercrime competition? Monty Tech team can hack it

By Jack Minch, jminch@sentinelandenterprise.com

Updated:
03/19/2013 06:37:56 AM EDT

SENTINEL & ENTERPRISE / STEVE SHERIDAN
Students on Monty Tech's Marine Corps Junior ROTC program from left, sophomores Jamison LaRoche and Brett Grant, senior Catelyne Farrell, and sophomores Connor Quick and Jake Marabello, Sophomore demonstrate the programs they used in the CyberPatriot Competition held in Maryland last Friday. The team placed second in the nation.

FITCHBURG -- Cyberterrorists should beware. There is a new generation of warriors ready to fight them, and some of the best attend Montachusett Regional Vocational Technical School.

Six members of the Monty Tech Marine Corps Junior ROTC program finished in second place in a national competition held in National Harbor, Md., on Friday.

Each student earned a $1,500 scholarship from the Air Force Association, which hosted the CyberPatriot competition.

"It was pretty intense," team member Jack Marabello said.

There were 1,500 teams in preliminary rounds last fall, but only a handful made it to the national competition.

SENTINEL & ENTERPRISE / STEVE SHERIDAN
Richard Duncan, an information-technology at Monty Tech and the mentor for the team, discusses how he prepared the students for the Cyber Patriot Competition, held in Maryland last Friday.

It was the third time a Monty Tech team made it to the finals, and this was the most cohesive, said retired Marine Corps 1st Sgt. Paul Jornet, who runs the school's Junior ROTC program.

Team members shared a camaraderie that gave the team a special bond, Jornet said.

He sat down with Farrell before the competition and told her to take command of the team.

"Leadership is about making decisions, and they are not always right, and then you have to adjust them, and that's just what she did," Jornet said.

The team traveled to Maryland on Wednesday and spent Thursday preparing for the competition, said mentor Richard Duncan, who teaches information technology at the school.

There were 14 teams representing Jr.

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ROTC teams, Civilian Air Patrol and the U.S. Naval Sea Cadets Corps.

Another 12 teams were in the open division, which included high-school students not associated with the military.

The team had to fix security problems in a computer network while simultaneously defending against hackers, decode file data to reveal hidden information, and set up a Cisco networking system with a router and switch, then set up a virtual network using Packet Tracer software, Duncan said.

Monty Tech won three qualifying rounds to earn a berth in the national competition.

"The decodes were random phrases like 'this old man,' LaRoche said.

Quick said the CyberPatriot team dovetails with his own interests.

"I've always been interested in computers and computer security, so it seemed like a fun thing," he said. "I'm a tinkerer, so I like to take things and fix or break them."

Farrell plans to attend Fitchburg State University to study criminal justice next year with the hope of one day specializing in cybercrime for the Massachusetts State Police.

She ran three of the team's 10 computers on Windows servers that had vulnerabilities, such as viruses and inadequate security.

"They were open to hacking," Farrell said.

After an initial assault, followed by a lull, the attacks came fast and furious.

"We were, like, 'Oh God, what's going on?'" Farrell said.

The security event took 3 1/2 hours, followed by a one-hour Cisco test.

"It was pretty awesome," said Quick, who managed a computer running Linux. "There are different operating systems so slightly different ways to do it."

The competition is exciting because it offers real-world problems to solve, LaRoche said.

Defending against cyberterrorism offers job security, Grant said.

"It's always going to be here, and the government will always need us," he said.

Secretary of the Air Force Michael Donley presented awards at a banquet Saturday evening.

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